Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale Read Free

over life’s intangibles and losing himself in them for days at a time. Time for change, said the man who set emotions to music, stretched heart and soul on canvas for all. How raw it must be, how rewarding, to dig deep and find beauty, to find light even in the shadows. But a week of Hammonds was what he wanted. She couldn’t wait to see what he painted, what he sang, what he thought after that.

Chapter Four
    On a Tuesday morning, Deena’s immediate family prepared for departure. Tony, slim, long-bodied with shoulders hunched in that perpetual state of adolescent angst, gutted out the mailbox thoroughly, before dragging his suitcases out to the car. He made two phone calls by the trunk, the first undoubtedly to his best friend, Lizard, an Irish-Jewish skateboarder who lived next door with his mother, a feminist and sex therapist of notoriety who traversed the daytime talk show circuits whenever her new drivel released. His father, an archeologist, spent most of his days in places where the people weren’t, returning for endless over-the-hedge conversations about flint tools and plant life in the Paleolithic era. Deena figured he must have been a behemoth in bed, to hold the interest of a woman who sold sexual freedom for a living. God knows it couldn’t have been the conversation she clung to.
    Tony called Wendy next, his best and oldest friend, held onto from his earliest days in Miami. Unlike with Lizard, there were no eye rolls and snorts on his end this time, no guffaws of laughter rupturing the air. He did, however, turn his back to Deena. That was something new.
    Mia nearly toppled her on her fly out the door, a slam of her skateboard to pavement, a jump and jerk later, had her careening for the idling taxi van at high speed, one duffle bag in hand.
    Mia, with her flannel in the summer and ripped jeans, whose hair, never quite tamed or washed clean. Mia, who knew Latin, Japanese, Spanish and more poetry than her mother could ever hope for, but also knew every horror icon sprang from Nosferatu to Jigsaw. She took solitude over girls, her skate and surfboard over nail polish, and had an appetite both massive and bizarre: Iguana in Trinidad, brain curry in India, river eel in Japan. Mia lived for adventure; she was all Tak and no Deena.
    Tony jammed the off button on his cell and scowled before shoving it into his pockets. While she’d heard nothing of his conversation with Wendy, Deena could imagine its gist. After all, he spent most days gnawing away his lips over what music school would undoubtedly have to reject him. After all, he reasoned, he hadn’t been introduced to the study of music until eleven—other kids saw it at three or four. He seemed to forget his sister Mia, who had begun piano lessons at three, but was much more adept at managing an epic flip on that godforsaken skateboard than she was at conjuring up a decent version of London Bridge.
    Tony, on the other hand, had taken to music in desperation. He had more than an ear for music, more even than his perfect pitch. Obsession made him think in notes and dream music. His early college admission applications, long sent to five of the best programs in the country, included, Fini, a symphony he wrote himself. It also included a segment of him performing the fugue in Beethoven’s Sonata Opus 106 at a school recital the year before. It also included, by his mother’s force of hand, an essay detailing how his symphony had been inspired by his life of homelessness and the search to find his family. Deena had to stand over him to make sure he included as much in what he mailed to every school. Take embarrassment, she’d told him, take weakness, and make it your strength. Sometimes, it’s the only weapon available.
    Music had started out as a parental hope to conjure discipline and expand their son’s view of the world. It succeeded tenfold. It didn’t need Tak’s bribe of any car of Tony’s choosing in exchange for the mastering of three